WK 7.1 Sustainable future - Hanane Ben Abdeslam

The most common definition according to the Brundtland Report about sustainable development is “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In this blog I will explain to you about to who this ‘needs’ are referring to. Because the needs of a family of four in The Netherlands are different than to a family of four in Africa. But also, the sustainability for example of the transportation sector is also different than the sustainability of global agriculture. So, the most important thing for you to understand is that this definition doesn’t tell us what sustainability actually looks like in practice. To this point, there are four suggestion to help advance the ‘global sustainability’ narrative. First, within different sectors there are different challenges. If your goal is to create a more sustainable energy system, does that mean reducing carbon emissions or does it refer to clean sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind. Second, people have different ideas of living in a more sustainable world. Third, we need to clarify who benefits from sustainability efforts. Does sustainability energy help the millions living without access to electricity? Finally, sustainability in practice has a different meaning. People are wondering if it actually works, or if it’s different from the world we live in today. No matter how different we want the future to be, we can’t simply ignore the way people actually live today.

What I’ve learned is that part of the problem with designing a vision of sustainable future is that the future is hard to predict or imagine. Whether predictions from organizations such as these and others hold true is obviously to be determined, but at least they’re providing a collection of possible road maps with time for course correction. 

Looking at the future, we have to think what sustainability looks like in day-to-day life and in the future. So, my question for you is, what does a sustainable future look like to you?

Hanane Ben Abdeslam

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